


Honesty Is

by TheColorBlue



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Multiplicity/Plurality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:25:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3591144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garnet doesn't worry about introducing Steven to her disparate parts. Well, she doesn't <i>visibly</i> worry.</p><p>A collection of little stories having to do with Garnet. Not posted in chronological order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Best Policy

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't exactly seen every episode of the series yet so far, so hopefully none of this fic comes across as contradictory to any aspect of the show.

“Garnet” isn’t exactly a masquerade, but they’ve talked about this: about how humans don’t exactly have any points of comparisons in regards to fusion states, so for as long as Steven has known Garnet: it’s not like. It’s not like they’ve been hiding anything in particular from him, in the strict sense of the words. They. They’ve strictly been themselves, every day and in every way. They love Steven very much. They haven’t been lying. 

“But it’s not like he’s ever had the chance to get to know Rudy or Sapphire as themselves,” Pearl muses, a touch anxiously. She’s making a stack of sandwiches for Steven to eat for when he gets home from town. She keeps having to smack Amethyst’s greedy hand from scooping the sandwiches right out from underneath her. Pearl is worry-cooking, if you could call sandwich-making cooking. Looking after Steven worries her, at least when it comes to the unpredictable bumps in raising a boy growing up into a bigger boy. The worry makes her eyes look very big on her face. 

Mustard and mayonnaise ooze a little over the edges of ham sandwiches. The dripping spread makes the otherwise very tidily-cut sandwiches kind of messy. 

“Steven’s a big boy, he can take a surprise, or two,” Amethyst said around a mouthful of sandwich. Pearl gives Amethyst an evil look, and moves the plate over to the other side of the table. Amethyst keeps following her around the edge, and Pearl moves again.

“For his next birthday, it’ll be great,” Amethyst said. She’s still peering covetously at rest of the sandwich plate, like she’s ready to steal the entire thing away for herself. 

Garnet stands in the kitchen, arms crossed, and doesn’t interfere in the sandwich skirmish. 

Steven has had experience fusing. That’s not what Garnet is worried about. The worry has a bit more to do with: getting to know someone, and thinking you know them for who they are. Then realizing they’re not quite that way at all. Between Ruby’s hot-headed bluster, and Sapphire’s gentle coolness, Garnet is pretty much wearing her game face, her expression like a brick wall. She’s here to look out for the best of Steven. 

Inside, though, she’s kind of worrying. 

A little bit. 

She’s worried. 

When Steven gets home, the sandwiches are gone, and Pearl is yelling at an unrepentant Amethyst. Garnet is lounging on the couch, cool as a cucumber like the lying liar they both are. 

Sapphire had the foresight to order pizza. Ruby probably scared the pizza delivery guy, wanting to know, her voice pitched subtly, with great meaning, where was the extra ranch dressing they’d asked for.

In the end, Steven is happy anyway. 

He sits on the floor and eats pizza, shares it with Amethyst even, the generous soul that he is, and Garnet hopes that Steven won’t mind that she isn’t quite the person that he’d thought she was. 

She’s really hoping.


	2. Jail Break

Without Sapphire, Ruby is a basket of Great Emotion, rolling about on the floor and demanding that Steven _avert his eyes_ , as it were, as if that would have solved anything. 

It’s pretty terrible. 

She hadn’t realized how much she had come to rely on a.) Sapphire’s Future Sight (like a crutch; like she’d come to rely on a second set of wheels on a bicycle; the third leg on a stool, and now she’s fallen over and can’t get up)

and b.) Sapphire, but that would have gone without saying, she would have always known it anyway; it’s more like she hadn’t realized what a Pain in the Unmentionables it was to be wrenched away from the Love of Her Life, not to mention her nearly literal Invaluable Other Half without whom she can Barely Function)

and c.) the fact that she’d always looked like the adult in front of Steven. Or the fact that she (and Sapphire) had always looked the part of adulthood in front of Steven. Not that age meant much of anything to a Gem, for whom the appearance of aging was merely an illusion projected by one’s innate consciousness; but of course that simply underlined the fact that probably what this meant was that Ruby’s innate consciousness was characterized by properties of Barely Adolescent and Perpetually Stuck in Kid Shorts. Probably. 

Okay, though to be fair, Ruby is generally pretty okay with the way she looks. If she didn’t like it, she wouldn’t take the form. But right now, on this ship and separated from Sapphire, and forced to confront Steven un-introduced and in Her Kid Shorts, she mostly feels like rolling around in an agony and then punching the wall a few times to forcibly distract from the agony. 

And then, _eventually_ , she notices that Steven is on the outside of a cell, rather than sequestered on the inside. 

Sapphire would have never been that slow on the uptake, Ruby thought to herself bitterly and with great angst; before she had gone on to figuratively rattle the bars for weakness, Steven having demonstrated his ability to touch the energy field; before she’s doing everything everything except hopping up and down and cursing the vastly unpleasant shock that’s gone up her arm. 

Without Sapphire, she’s pretty ridiculously helpless in too many ways to count, but she’d already known that. 

Pretty darn pitiful. And then probably the worst, or the best? part of it is that there’s a tiny part of her that’s pretty darn proud of it.

She’s pitiful without Sapphire. 

But she’s unstoppable with Sapphire. 

Steven sticks himself into the energy field again, and Ruby’s zooming out. She’s gotta find Sapphire. 

_She’s just gotta_.


	3. Morning Workout

It was primarily Sapphire’s fault that Garnet’s public face tended to be one of stoicism. Partially, that was due to Sapphire’s generally outwardly calm disposition, but also it was a calculated social move and battle strategy. When you appeared calm, it was harder for the opponent to get a bead on you. They never saw the punch coming. 

Ruby always yielded and deferred to Sapphire. Whenever something bothered her, or got her angry, she let the slow stir of passions circle around underneath Sapphire’s patient calm, and then let the rage out when appropriate. On the other hand, sometimes the passions just got out anyway. 

Sometimes it was hard to tell when the move outward ended up being deliberate or not, even from inside perspectives. It got hard to tell, especially when Sapphire smoothed everything over again with her even tones and cool demeanor. 

They stood out on the beach with their beloved little Steven, doing frankly idiotic little stretching and warming-up exercise to the direction of the radio exercise program. They did it because they loved Steven and following along with him made him happy, but boy did it ever make them not that much happy. 

Ruby might have smashed the radio after tolerating the morning exercises with Steven, but it was Sapphire who said with calm finality, _Okay, we’re done._

Ruby might have thought to herself, with some degree of relished delight, that Sapphire had been as aggravated as Ruby about the whole tedious indignity of those morning exercises, but you could have sooner got her to punt Steven into the sea than to admit actually feeling annoyance about anything. 

But, anyway, maybe it didn’t matter in the end. They’d been in-and-out of each other’s pockets so long, joined at the figurative hips, that sometimes they really might as well been, really were, one in thought and motivation. So often, it made sense to say “I” as Garnet. They’d both come to the same endpoint, the same agreements in gestures, even if the mental routes of them might have been a little different. 

“Do you see any possible futures where you, umm, come with me and have a great time?” Steven asked. 

They both looked at Steven, at his delightful little show of anticipation and his very prolonged eyebrow dance. 

Ruby was thinking of a morning of further indignities, and Sapphire was thinking of a morning of further indignities as routed out through the maps of their Future Vision, but then they both thought about making Steven happy and getting closer to him. 

So Garnet adjusted her glasses, solemnly stated, “Yes,” and let little Steven tow her along to the next stop in a day full of so much potential for both joy and mutual embarrassment.


	4. Future Vision

Having “Future Vision” was not the same thing as having “social or emotional competence, particularly in regards to humans.” They were working on it. Having Steven around helped on the “working on it” part, Rose Quartz always had been so loving and mothering and clearly Steven had inherited her capacity to love and make others feel loved, but it was probably a bit unfair that Steven also had to be Garnet’s practice person for “behaving in a loving and mothering way.” 

Sapphire was so sure that simply by speaking in a calm, even slightly irreverent or joking manner, she would assuage Steven’s fears about all the possible routes towards death that surrounded him. 

First of all, because it helped assuage her own—well her own and Ruby’s—fears about Steven’s mortality. Violence and _panicking about it_ clearly hadn’t been the answer, that one time after Steven’s last birthday, so Sapphire decided that the best way would be to approach the problem in as straight-forward a manner as possible. She squashed down the fear by putting Garnet’s best game face on. She pushed it down deep so that she and Ruby didn’t have to think too hard about how afraid they were of the possibilities of it all the time. 

So: of course every day was fraught with peril. 

Steven could choke on a chip. 

Or fall into a pit. 

Or get bullied by wasps. Until he died. 

Cholesterol clogging his arteries was a faster death than any incident of clumsiness with a butter knife. Telling all these things in an emotionless manner would take all the fear out of them and make Steven feel completely better wouldn’t it? 

Wouldn’t it?(?!?)

They watched the sweat bead down Steven’s face, and also the hugely panicked look on his face, and finally Sapphire went for her last ditch attempt to keep Steven squarely on the straight and narrow path of safety, which was too tell him to not go on the roof, _no matter what_. 

No matter what!!!

Maybe if she said it forcefully enough, it would make things all right. 

I did the right thing, didn’t I? Sapphire wanted to ask Ruby, in the moments before they stepped on the portal. But she didn’t want Ruby to worry, and also Ruby had the slightly worrying, though also endearing, tendency to almost nearly always agree with whatever Sapphire decided, so Sapphire didn’t say anything in a conscious way. Sapphire was sure that Ruby could feel a bit of the doubt though, anyway. Ruby would feel that itch of doubt just as she was gearing up to beat stuff up with her fists, another gem mission and all of that, so Sapphire squashed down the doubt. 

They wanted to be closer with Steven. There were a million things that Steven didn’t know about them, about Garnet, and this was just one part of it; wasn’t it right to tell it to him? 

It should have been right, and Future Vision should have been able to tell them every possible correct route and decision, but somehow it didn’t. 

All it showed them was Steven sitting on the roof, scared and angry and beat-up with anxiety, and there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. They didn’t know what to do, what was the right choice. And it scared Sapphire so much.

She just wanted to do right by Steven. 

She just wanted to make things _right_.


	5. Alone Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart by Lea posted on [tumblr](http://magickedteacup.tumblr.com/post/114818131664/lea-drew-fanart-for-honesty-is-and-let-me-upload)!

Humans as a species are still kind of a baffling to Garnet, even after thousands of years of being on this planet. The baffling part doesn’t usually bother her at all, except for where it may make it harder for Steven and her to become emotionally closer. That part is pretty important. The most important. 

Honestly, she’s still feeling pretty cautious about this business of teaching Steven how to synchronize his movements with others through dance, preparing him for the possibility of fusion. She doesn’t want to get her hopes up. Sapphire doesn’t want to get her hopes up. Ruby can’t make up her mind whether or not she wants to get hopes up in general. They have Future Vision, but that’s kind of useless at the moment. All it’s showing them is equal possibilities of Steven going one way or the other. It’s not helpful at all, and also Steven is demonstrating an aptitude for awkward clumsiness, and that’s pretty much the opposite of what they need. 

It makes Garnet feel weirdly sad, and when she gets sad, she gets defensible and moody. Well, moody for Garnet. Pearl and Amethyst say things about how difficult fusion is, and Garnet just says it. She says, “Not for me.” Sapphire won’t let the anger show, but they’re angry. It’s not about Steven, really. They’re not angry at him, couldn’t ever be. It’s this sad-angriness that there’s this experience that is so important to them, the most important, that is completely alien to human experience as Garnet’s seen it, and how can they ever be closer when Steven doesn’t understand this most important thing. How can they possibly become closer.

Then Pearl starts expressing doubts out loud. And Amethyst makes a joke, “It’s Steven, who knows what’s going to happen,” and then Garnet just says it. She says, “Well, I think Steven can do it.” 

Like saying so will make it true. 

She wants Steven to be capable of fusion.

She wants it more than anything else in the entire world.


	6. Telephone

The biggest limitation of Future Vision is that you have to know what to ask for, what knowledge you are looking for. It’s a big factor in why Garnet so frequently only uses Future Vision in circumstances of physical danger or anticipation. Using Future Vision to protect Steven from physical harm? No problem. Using Future Vision to anticipate the next move in a pattern-based video game? A cinch. Using Future Vision to answer a phone call pretending to be Steven’s mom? Well…

In Sapphire’s defense, she panicked. She could barely even muster up the attention to use Future Vision, much less summon up the appropriate scripted cues with which to answer human social queries. 

Ruby was a little bit faster on their metaphorical feet, for a given value of the term “speed.” 

“Hello,” Sapphire had said. “This… is Mom Universe.” 

Promptly followed by Sapphire going completely, horribly blank.

Ruby had rushed in. Well, there was no _visible_ physical rush, compromising with Sapphire’s physical mannerisms meant that the only thing Steven and Connie saw Garnet do was adjust her glasses, but that was completely Ruby. As were the lines, “The children are playing swords.”

“Sorry, _with_ swords,” Sapphire interrupted, nonsensically logical about the correction, and knowing it. Like watching herself fall apart and sort of feeling like she was dying from the humiliation of it.

“They’re bleeding,” Ruby went on, pig-headedly determined to see this through. “Oh no, they are dead."

"Don’t call again,” Sapphire said.

And hung up.

They both looked at Steven, phone still in hand.

“Sorry, I panicked.” Garnet said. 

And to their credit, they really _were_ sorry.


	7. Road Trip

Rose Quartz always did have terrible taste in music. Subjectively speaking, she had terrible taste in everything; she loved good things, and then she also loved the good in things that others might have found offensive to the physical senses.

But honestly too: maybe she also loved those things that always somehow led to the most beautiful experiences anyway, for all the absurdity of the situations. 

When Greg asked if Garnet liked the music blasting through the speakers, Sapphire and Ruby had a moment. They had a moment as Garnet, synchronized on a beautiful thought, a joyful thought: a joke and also a shouting statement of personal feeling, of horror and repulsion and laughter and also that sensation like when you wanted to hit your fist against a wall, all your feelings welling up because you were laughing so hard there were tears coming out of your eyes from how horribly absurd, yet wonderful, the moment was.

Greg asked if Garnet liked the music and she opened the door on her side of the car and just—

dropped out. 

Rolling through the sand. 

And yet there was a weird laughing happiness, even mixed in with the disgust at the music they were escaping from. 

Two kids so alike in thought it was like a leap in the air, and out, and gone. 

They were as good as _gone_.

\-- 

They lounged out on the roof of the car after.

The ocean desert rolled out in front of them, and golden, and gorgeous when the sun began to set, and Lion carrying the children loping alongside. 

Even with the danger of the moment, they were so happy.

Garnet was so, strangely, wonderfully: happy.


	8. My Only Weakness

Ruby is so stupidly happy about the giant axe they find in the strawberry battlefield, and Sapphire is happy too. Ruby adores large weapons and beating things up with her fists, and Sapphire would have to say that living with Ruby this long has been rubbing off on her. She’s happy that Ruby’s happy, but she’s kind of just happy about the giant axe by itself too. What can she say. Passion is contagious. 

So they pick up the thing up, rest it over their shoulders, and say to Steven, all even tones, 

“Never know when you might need one of these.”

\---

Sapphire would have to say: one gets used to the body. 

It’s the nature of fusion to acclimate quickly to the fused-state body, particularly in moments of danger, but it’s different for her and Ruby, because they’ve spent so long in sustained fusion state. Their body may only be an illusion, but it still has qualities of interacting with the outside world. 

Sometimes she forgets that this is not her body by itself.

Sometimes she remembers, and it is. 

_Interesting_.

Being Garnet, that is. 

Being strong, and tall. Looking down on nearly everyone on earth. Being strong enough to lift a door off its hinges if they aren’t careful. 

Ruby loves it. 

She loves being strong enough to pummel anything, to threaten with violence and actually have the fists to back it up.

This body has grown on Sapphire, she would say. 

She likes it very much too. 

It is home. 

And also. 

She likes: 

Being strong. 

But also being both strong and controlled and gentle, lifting Steven off their hair when he’s jumped onto it, and Sapphire saying, for both herself and Ruby (who, too, is glowing inside with adoration):

“Tiny hands.” 

Their face all but beaming with their love. 

"My only weakness.”


End file.
